


A Tender Monster

by folie_a_yeux



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Alternate Ending, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Oral Sex, Remembering Mischa at really sad and awkward times, Season 2 realities WHAT SEASON 2 REALITIES ;_____;, Sensory Porn, Tender Monsters, can we just pretend the ear never happened tho, is apparently my new Hannigram tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:07:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folie_a_yeux/pseuds/folie_a_yeux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal himself rarely needs release. Though he is a lover of many bodies, an admirer of many forms, he seldom feels the urge to relinquish himself to them, to pour himself into someone else. To open himself to such messy desires.</p><p>But to drink someone in, to take that pain and yearning into himself so viscerally, is an awakening pleasure. And a coveted one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tender Monster

Hannibal takes a moment, before he wraps his arms around Will’s waist, freeing him from the stiff buttons of his faded shirt, to take in the scent of him, and to relish the coming taste.

Will is staying the night. It’s become a habit of sorts with them now: Will insisting he’s only coming for dinner; Hannibal nudging him into some cognac, a brief talk around the fire. Convincing him the dogs will be fine until morning, that it’s far too late to take such a journey by car. Reassuring his doubts, massaging his worries, teasing and coaxing him into one more stay, one more embrace. One more night in his safe house, in his soft, warm bed.

Hannibal eases the plaid off Will’s shoulders. Slips the fraying material off of his arms. Lays it on the edge of the bed. Running kisses down the shoulder, from the collarbone to the nub of his shoulder blade, as he removes his shirt and slips out of his pants. Will leans forward and unbuckles his black leather belt, pulling off his jeans. The moonlight from the window catches the tense and release of his back; the tight cords of his arms with their long, delicate hands; the light blue of his boxer shorts as the material stretches at his straining cock, his tightly muscled thighs.

It only takes a touch, Hannibal’s hand on his shoulder, for Will to jolt back into his old forebodings.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he whispers. Turning. The muscle in his jaw twitching as he grimaces, that strange twist-smile that ripples across the stubble-lined bone of his jaw, that creases his wearied eyes at the corners. Eyes that beg for deliverance, and to be freed from the need for it.

“You’re my therapist, Hannibal. I’m — I’m unstable, I’m irrational, and I shouldn’t — we shouldn’t —“

“Shhhh. My good Will. My sweet Will.” Hannibal takes his face in his hands, forearms resting against the pale, heaving chest, fingers lacing themselves lightly through the tangled brown curls that tickle Will’s neck and ears.

“You know we’re never been a patient and his therapist. Not truly.”

His own dark sandy hair falls across his forehead as he smiles dark irises into Will’s blue eyes. It is, he knows on some level, unfair. Hannibal wants to know what will happen, where this will go, but it’s Will who have to deal with the happenings, who will have to reassemble in the fallout.

It’s hard, as it’s always been, to care. To think about anything but what’s right in front of him, to train his ravenous eyes on anything but the wounded animal calling for the fox to come running.

“Every day, Jack forces you to take these poisons into your body. To immerse yourself in man’s basest natures.” One thumb strokes the delicate bone of Will’s cheek, grazing against the two-day remnants of a clumsy shave. “I am your anchor. You do not have to protect me.”

And Will smiles then. A real smile, heartbreaking for its softness, its sudden flood across his face.

“You —“ he starts to whisper, and Hannibal leans into Will’s words, presses thin lips to soft mouth, and swallows them.

***

Hannibal himself rarely needs release. Though he is a lover of many bodies, an admirer of many forms, he seldom feels the urge to relinquish himself to them, to pour himself into someone else. To open himself to such messy desires.

But to drink someone in, to take that pain and yearning into himself so viscerally, is an awakening pleasure. And a coveted one.

He lowers Will onto the bed and leans him back, taking his wrists in one hand as the other puts deft fingers to his neck. Cradling the soft flesh there, fingers splayed across the murmur of his half-choked moans, the jutting of his adam’s apple, the flickers of his shuddering pulse.

He moves down slowly, taking the time to inhale, to lick and kiss every curve and crevice. The sharp scent of male sweat and bad aftershave. The smell of fresh-cleaned dog, the lingering of perfume from Alana’s perfunctory hugs, the scrape and purpling bruise from a bad fall catching Jack Crawford’s latest creation. A mix of tenderness and possession, this, the possession which is tenderness at its root.

Will’s skin pulses heat, his head arched back as Hannibal relinquishes his wrists. As he runs his hands down to Will’s thighs, gripping with a suddenness that causes Will’s hips to buck, his lungs to exhale sharply.

“Let me help you, Will,” Hannibal murmurs, running his hands up Will’s legs, hands splaying across his narrow, shaking hips. “Let me save you from the dark.”

“Please,” Will whispers. He clenches the red sheets before one hand lunges down and clasps at Hannibal’s wrist, fingers clutching with increasing urgency before releasing him again.

Hannibal slides Will’s boxers down his legs. Leans forward, running his greedy fingers along Will’s ass, to caress the tender skin between ass and cock and legs, to stroke the soft curve of his inner calves and the tender soles of his feet.

Then he cradles Will’s balls, and takes his eager cock in hand.

Will jerks as Hannibal presses his thumb against his shaft, fingers curling and squeezing around the length of him. “Yes,” Will groans, “please,” and Hannibal moistens his lips and lets his tongue flick against the head. Teasing the tender skin there again and again as he grasps Will’s cock and uses the fingers of his other hand to play against Will’s sack. Until his red face and thundering pulse can no longer stand to devour only Will’s gasps and moans, and Hannibal leans in and takes him into his mouth.

Will’s thighs clench against the daggers of Hannibal’s cheekbones, pressing and releasing as he sucks and teases, as he pushes his tongue against Will’s cock, tightening his red lips around its length, moving his head steadily up and down the shaft as he curves his palm to push one flat finger lightly against his prostate.

The sheets, Hannibal thinks with only mild disapproval, are likely ruined. Wrinkled and torn under the mattress as Will thrashes on the bed, as Hannibal feels the hot liquid rush building under the thin skin of Will’s throbbing cock.

Hannibal loosens his hold, runs his tongue up, and sets his teeth gently against the membrane just below the head. Pressing the tip of his tongue against the purple vein pulsing there. And lightly, softly, bites.

Will screams, a strangled cry choked off as Hannibal grasps him once again in his hand, as he presses his palm up against Will’s balls and prostate, as he buries his face between his thighs and claims Will’s cock with his lips and cheeks and throat.

He takes it all in, the molten, oaken taste of him, the bitter tang that follows the surge of salty cum that flows into his mouth.

 _He’s been eating better,_ Hannibal thinks, and swallows.

***

They’re lying in bed, a mass of limbs, Will initially, obediently cradled against Hannibal with one arm across his chest, and now somehow flung halfway across the bed, half over the good doctor, when Hannibal is torn from a dream of blacks and reds, smells the sharp yellow of daffodils, and thinks: _Mischa._

He’s chilled by the winter air. It seeps its way through the cracks of his terrace doors, and the sweat of a nightmare clings to the dew of his bare chest, the hair on their tangled legs. He’s grown so used to Will sleeping in the nude that he’s taken to going without his own night shirt and slacks, his thick rich robe. A turn of influence that would intrigue him, if he weren’t always so occupied with the sleeping body next to him.

He shifts away from Will now, sitting up slightly in bed, his tanned skin resting against the stark white of the pillows, and he barely registers the murmured question, Will’s half-asleep call into the dark, before Hannibal hears the peal of her dying dream-laughter, feels the soft curl of her hair against his palm, and blinks at the hot tears burning his eyes, chokes at the taste of his own hideous wracking sob.

“Hannibal?”

Will’s arms. Clumsy in their immediacy, but immediate for all that. Small, tapered hands circling Hannibal’s wrists, pulling him into the warm invitation of his naked chest, legs pressing to Hannibal’s as Will draws him down and in.

“It’s alright,” his lover murmurs. Spooning up against him, rocking him gently through silent sobs. Never asking, never needing to know. His Will. This same Will who reaches for the hand of a killer under his bed, who sees death not as art or tragedy but for the humans who are and then simply _aren’t_. This Will who baffles and infuriates and enraptures him. Who takes a tender monster into his arms, cradling death and darkness in a soft, warm heart.

“It’ll be okay,” Will whispers again. He burrows his nose into the crook of his neck, turns his head to kiss the bones of Hannibal’s spine. “Whatever it is, it’s — it’s alright. It will be alright. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

And it is almost indescribable, this comfort. The knowledge that Will doesn’t need to know. The understanding Will can have of him without ever, really, understanding what he is. That he is simply _there_.

And Hannibal knows, as he drifts into sleep, holding Will to him, immersed in this love, that Will won’t be leaving. He won't let him.

Not now. Not ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> In this universe, Hannibal has decided to get Will help for his encephalitis, and not to frame him for murder. There are better ways to win someone over to your side, after all. Way sexier ways.


End file.
